Hito Steyerl

evergreen_web_banner.png

KBOO is open to the public! To visit the station, contact your staff person or call 503-231-8032.


Hosted by: 
Produced by: 
KBOO
Program:: 
Air date: 
Tue, 04/18/2023 - 11:30am to 12:00pm
More Images: 
img_8053.jpg
future_affairs_berlin_2019_hito_steyerl.jpg
Sara Krajewski talking about Hito Steyerl’s video installation “This is the Future”

My guest this week is Sara Krajewski [PRONOUNCED kra-JESS-ki], the Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Portland Art Museum. Krajewski is talking about Hito Steyerl’s [PRONOUNCED HEE-to STY-rol] video installation called “This is the Future” which critiques artificial intelligence and futurism. The curator talks about how AI has changed since this was made in 2018, German art humor, the transparent screen and the glossy black floor.

This show was recorded using Zoom video conferencing software, phone-to-iPhone14Pro.

 

 

FROM THE PRESS RELEASE

The Portland Art Museum presents the U.S. premiere of This is the Future, by the filmmaker and writer Hito Steyerl. This exhibition explores a vibrant, imagined garden through an immersive environment of video projection, sculpture, and spatial intervention. Steyerl is one of the foremost artists offering critical reflections on the complexities of the digital world, global capitalism, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for society, which is explored in this exhibition.

These are documentary images of the future.
Not about what it will bring,
but about what it is made of.

Throughout Steyerl’s career, the acclaimed German artist has interrogated the hidden connections between technology, political movements, and global capitalism, creating contemporary parables that shine a light on the invisible infrastructure established by digital forces such as data mining and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Her works captivate viewers through her nods toward media spectacle and forms of popular entertainment.

Hito Steyerl’s multimedia installation This is the Future, created in 2019, depicts a vibrant, imaginary garden brought to life with video projection and sculpture. With its pulsing soundtrack, dazzling imagery, dark humor, and astute narrative, This is the Future explores the age-old human desire to predict the future and how AI neural networks promise to deliver it to us.

The exhibition opens with a short film featuring bright colors and fluid, digitally disrupted images. We meet Heja, an incarcerated woman who captures airborne seeds on wadded up paper to cultivate a garden in her cell. She must protect it from the prison guards so she hides it in the future, where her plants evolve through the predictive powers of the neural network. The plants become potent remedies for a range of today’s social and psychological ailments such as alleviating social media addiction to resisting the culture of over working. Interspersed with Heja’s story, a second narrator, the voice of a neural network, ponders humanity’s desire to see and control what is yet to come, ultimately reminding us that despite thousands of years of predictions, no human can escape the inevitability of death. “Entering the future is a massive health hazard,” according to the narrator.

ru·der·al (ro͞o′dər-əl) n. A plant thriving
in disturbed areas. from Latin rūdus,
rūder-, rubble, broken stones.
These floral productions flourish in
triumph, upon the ruins of digital disruption.

The film sets the stage for Power Plants, a series of video sculptures acquired by the Museum through the Contemporary Collectors Circle initiative. Multiple LED screens mounted on steel armatures host colorful and morphing imagery generated by a neural network that predicts a future type of plant based on machine learning of thousands of images of plants. Short texts describe the healing properties of the plants—which seem to grow out of a rocky landscape indicative of the devastating climate crisis—intended to be future remedies for contemporary social, political, ecological, and technological ills.

Steyerl has described This is the Future as a positive look at our future, despite the impending climate crisis and its worsening impact on society. Steyerl imagines a time when plants take on “political characteristics or abilities that are able to heal the present… it is definitely a vision of nature that is more optimistic than the current allows…” This work proposes that AI could theoretically be used to create positive effects, something that seems unimaginable in today’s world of Big Data. And the exhibition suggests an unexpected pathway toward a resilient future.

The future starts anew at any moment, this moment is always in the present, this moment is always now —Hito Steyerl

Hito Steyerl: This is the Future is curated by Sara Krajewski, The Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Supported in part by the Contemporary Art Council of the Portland Art Museum, Maribeth Collins Exhibition Endowment Fund, Miller Meigs Endowment for Contemporary Art, and the OCAC Visiting Artist Fund.

 

More about Hito Steyerl and her work

The New York Times: Hito Steyerl Is an Artist With Power. She Uses It for Change—”Her work has never been more recognized or relevant…. She represents a new paradigm of the artist not as solitary genius but as networked thinker.”

The New Yorker: Hito Steyerl’s Digital Visions—”Her savage, mischievous works about surveillance, automation, digital platforms, and the art market have made her one of the most revered figures in the mercurial world of contemporary art.”

ArtReview: Artist Hito Steyerl heads 2017 edition of ArtReview’s annual Power 100—”Art is powerful. Or at least it’s the construct of powerful forces, not always of the positive kind. This is something Steyerl recognises. The artist makes the top slot on this list because she actively attempts to disrupt this nexus of power.”

Andrew Kreps Gallery: The Work of Hito Steyerl—Artist biography, selected works, and more.

 

 

 

 http://portlandartmuseum.org/

 

THE BIG SPRING ASK

 

Can you help us pay for it to keep live programming on the air?

KBOO Radio is a volunteer-run nonprofit, and it needs your money if you are listening. Even Elon couldn’t call us “government funded.”

Donate to KBOO right now  and you will feel good all year knowing you are supporting independent media and training the next gen of radio kids.  https://secure.givelively.org/donate/the-kboo-foundation .

Show your support for KBOO programs like Art Focus by becoming a member of KBOO today.

Go to kboo.fm/give, or you can donate by texting K-B-O-O to 4-4-3-2-1. It’s our members who make KBOO possible so donate today. Thanks for tuning in and thanks for listening to volunteer powered, community supported K-B-O-O Portland.

To hear previous episodes of Art Focus or any of our KBOO public affairs programming, just go to KBOO dot F-M or listen on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Joseph Gallivan has been a reporter since 1990. He has covered music for the London Independent, Technology for the New York Post, and arts and culture for the Portland Tribune, where he is currently a Feature Writer. He is the author of two novels, "Oi, Ref!" and "England All Over" which are available on Amazon.com

josephgallivan@gmail.com 

Download audio file
Topic tags: 
Genre(s): 

Episode Playlist

  • Time
    11:00
    Artist
    Miles Davis
    Song
    Miles Ahead
    Album
    Miles Ahead
    Label
    SME - Legacy Recordings
  • Time
    11:29
    Artist
    David Bowie
    Song
    Andy Warhol - 1999 Remastered Version
    Album
    Hunky Dory
    Label
    Parlophone UK
  • Time
    11:29
    Artist
    Vince Guaraldi Trio
    Song
    Cast Your Fate to the Wind
    Album
    The Very Best Of Vince Guaraldi
    Label
    Quimbaya Entretenimiento S.A.S.
  • Time
    11:58
    Artist
    Solimine
    Song
    When You're Smiling
    Album
    No Stresso
    Label
    All Star Production

Audio by Topic: